Severe Obesity Is Increasing in the US
The number of people with obesity is high and holding steady in the US, but the proportion of those with severe obesity — especially women — has climbed since a decade ago, according to new government research.
The US obesity rate is about 40%, according to a 2021-2023 survey of about 6,000 people. Nearly 1 in 10 of those surveyed reported severe obesity, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. Women were nearly twice as likely as men to report severe obesity.
The overall obesity rate appeared lower compared to the 2017-2020 survey, but the change was too small to be considered statistically significant.
That means it's too soon to know whether new treatments, including blockbuster weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound, can help ease the obesity epidemic.
The results do show that the overall obesity rate in the US has not changed significantly in a decade, even as the rate of severe obesity climbed from nearly 8% in the 2013-2014 survey to nearly 10% in the most recent one. Before that, obesity had increased rapidly in the US since the 1990s.
Measures of obesity and severe obesity are determined according to body mass index, a calculation based on height and weight. People with a BMI of 30 are considered to have obesity; those with a BMI of 40 or higher have severe obesity. BMI is regarded as a flawed tool but remains widely used by doctors to screen for obesity.
The new study also found that obesity rates varied by education. Almost 32% of people with a bachelor's degree or higher reported having obesity, compared with about 45% of those with a college or high school diploma or less.
The new report follows the release earlier this month of data showing that in 2023, the rate of obesity ranged widely by place, from a high of more than 41% of adults in West Virginia to a low of less than 24% of adults in Washington, DC. Rates were highest in the Midwest and the South.
